BAA to back down on Third Runway — or maybe not!

Update: Insist­ing that expan­sion is still on the cards, BAA said: “We remain con­vinced that a third run­way is the only viable, cost­ed and thought-through way of meet­ing the need for extra run­way capac­i­ty to main­tain this country’s glob­al con­nec­tions to the rest of the world.”

Update: Insist­ing that expan­sion is still on the cards, BAA said: “We remain con­vinced that a third run­way is the only viable, cost­ed and thought-through way of meet­ing the need for extra run­way capac­i­ty to main­tain this country’s glob­al con­nec­tions to the rest of the world.”

It also described the process of draw­ing up a plan­ning appli­ca­tion as “com­plex,” adding that it “was always going to take until after the gen­er­al elec­tion”.

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Activists had rea­son to cheer as the Third Run­way at Heathrow was kicked into touch this week­end. The news comes hot on the heels of the announce­ment that E.on has delayed plans for a new Coal Pow­ered Pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth. Direct Action is bring­ing Direct Results.

At the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty Con­fer­ence, senior BAA fig­ures revealed that, if the Tories win the next elec­tion, the com­pa­ny will give up the fight for a third run­way — accord­ing to today’s Sun­day Times.

There­sa Vil­liers, the shad­ow trans­port sec­re­tary, said: “It seems BAA has wok­en up to the fact that we mean what we say on Heathrow and that if we win the gen­er­al elec­tion there will be no third run­way.”

BAA has said that before the elec­tion it will not sub­mit a plan­ning appli­ca­tion and will not sign large con­tracts in an attempt to “bounce” a future Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment to go ahead.

The Con­ser­v­a­tives had already warned BAA that they would not be pushed into accept­ing a run­way by this tac­tic and told BAA not to sign any con­struc­tion deals.

Pub­licly, BAA exec­u­tives are urg­ing the Tories not to “close the door” on expan­sion plants and say they are still work­ing on the project. But The Sun­day Times reports that they admit­ted they were sur­ren­der­ing in a meet­ing with aides to Vil­liers last week.